Walter Lippmann and the American Century — 33 Drifting toward Catastrophe

1. 1. Lippmann and James Reston persuaded Senator Vandenberg that isolationism was outdated and that he should support the UN, crafting a speech for him in January 1945.
2. 2. At the San Francisco UN conference, Lippmann was shocked by hardliners like Averell Harriman who sought confrontation with the Soviets, and he walked out of a press briefing.
3. 3. Lippmann denounced those who saw the UN as a means to police the Soviet Union, arguing that such an effort would undermine the organization.
4. 4. The US used its majority to steamroll the admission of Argentina over Soviet objections, which Lippmann saw as an ominous display of power politics.
5. 5. Lippmann warned that American steamroller tactics at the UN would make great powers more determined to keep important matters away from the organization.
6. 6. Lippmann believed the growing US-Soviet rift was not inherent but due to inexperience and emotional instability in the American delegation, and that Roosevelt would have handled it better.
7. 7. Lippmann saw British foreign policy as colonial and imperialistic, and blamed Britain for pushing the US into a hard line against the Soviets in Eastern Europe.
8. 8. Lippmann argued the US should act as a mediator among Britain, Russia, and China, rather than being used as an instrument of British imperialism.
9. 9. Lippmann declined Byrnes' offer to run State Department propaganda, arguing that public relations is inseparable from leadership and cannot be farmed out to specialists.
10. 10. Lippmann warned that the US must exercise its newfound power with humility and within its limits, lest it repeat the mistakes of Germany and Japan.
11. 11. Lippmann argued that American insistence on free elections in Eastern Europe appeared to Moscow as a cover for intervention to push the Soviets back to their 1939 borders.
12. 12. Lippmann warned that the US was drifting toward catastrophe by not using its power to avert the growing conflict with the Soviet Union.